The Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies collection supports the research and curriculum needs of the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) and related academic units in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The collection contains both primary and secondary source materials with an emphasis on scholarly publications in the humanities and social sciences, and on materials in the three main vernacular languages of the area: Arabic (50,000 volumes), Hebrew (19,000), and Persian (5,000), as well as ancient Greek, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Syriac, and Urdu. The collection includes an extensive list of current serials in all languages.
A core, specialized reference collection of more than 200 titles is integrated into the general Reference Collection. Most of these titles are included in the following document: